Geotextures: A Multi-source Geodesic Distance Field Approach for Procedural Texturing of Complex Meshes

Texture mapping is an important technique to add visual detail to geometric models. As an alternative to traditional image-based texture mapping, procedural textures are described by a function, with interesting properties such as compact representation, resolution independency and parametric adjustment of the visual appearance. Procedural textures are usually defined in the 2D texture space, making the result dependent on texture mapping coordinates assigned to the model, or in the 3D object space, implying in no correlation with the surface model. In this work we introduce GeoTextures, an approach that uses the geodesic distance, defined from multiple sources over the model, as a parameter that is taken into account by time-varying procedural textures. The use of geodesic distances allows the process to be both independent from the mapping of texturing coordinates and also conforming with the model surface. We validate the proposal by applying real-time procedural textures in complex surfaces.